


the angel on his tree

by maelstrcms



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angel/Human Relationships, Christmas Decorations, Eventual Romance, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, lowkey sacrilegious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27994941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maelstrcms/pseuds/maelstrcms
Summary: Johnny hangs the handmade angel ornament up on his Christmas tree every year, not knowing that it looksexactlylike Ten, an angel who watches him from Heaven.(Or: Ten finds himself falling in love with the boy who puts his likeness on his Christmas tree)
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63





	the angel on his tree

**Author's Note:**

> for a little wonder fest - 23 days of wonder | day 2: angel
> 
> so i have no idea what i was going for here HAHAH i just think johnten soulmates!!!!!
> 
> _unbetaed_

Every Christmas, Johnny would hang a handmade angel ornament on his Christmas tree. He had created the little angel as a kindergartener it out of clay, a few scraps of cloth, and a small bunch of yarn for its hair, and had proudly named it Ten, after his favourite number. Johnny put it up every single year without fail, even when he was in the process of moving from Chicago to Seoul, and his normally huge Christmas tree was reduced to a few sticks and leaves on his desk. No matter where he was, the angel accompanied him.

To him, the tiny decoration felt like a piece of home. Putting it up reminded him of the good times when he was still young and innocent, when the world seemed so big and beautiful that he didn’t dare to venture into it. Looking at it brought back memories, good and bad, of Christmastime. When the angel sat on the top of the tree, Johnny felt safe, like someone was watching over him from above.

He liked that feeling a lot.

Every Christmas, Ten would watch a boy hang a handmade angel ornament on his Christmas tree. It was fate that led him to find the boy, something nagging at him at the back of his head that there was something he _had_ to watch from the clouds above. He witnessed the creation of the ornament, a pleased look appearing on his face when the young boy glued on yellow strands of yarn _exactly_ like his hair.

From then on, Ten decided to watch over the boy, staring down from the heavens when he knew that his Christmas tree would be put up. Ten was fascinated by the merry celebrations that occurred, noticing the differences between each year’s festivities and another’s. He watched the child grow into a lanky teenager with arms and legs too long for his still-growing body, and after that into a strong young man with a dazzling smile. He observed the company he spent each Christmas with, meeting his friends and family from high up in the sky. Although he only saw them once a year, Ten felt like he knew them well enough that he could get along with them if they ever met.

He cherished the feeling of companionship following the child’s journey gave him. Through the kid, he felt as human as an angel could feel.

Johnny was five when he first saw the angel in his dreams.

The angel was tall and beautiful, with chin-length blonde hair and elegant white feathery wings. There was no halo hanging over his head, but his entire being radiated heat and radiance His eyes were closed, but his head faced Johnny, one of his arms reaching out to him. When the angel’s eyes opened, Johnny woke up, sweating in his own bed at home.

When he went to school, he had pulled the teacher aside and whispered in her ear.

“I had a dream of an angel last night, Miss!”

“Really?” 

“Yeah! He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t look like those angels in the drawings, though.”

The teacher kneeled down to look at him. “John, do you remember what the angel looks like?”

Johnny nodded, and she continued. “Why don’t you make your decoration look like the angel? Do you think that’ll make the angel happy?”

He gasped. “That’s a great idea, Miss! Do you have any yellow yarn? His hair was yellow. And he had huge wings!”

What young Johnny didn’t know was that the angel was watching his actions from above with a smile on his face.

The second encounter with the angel was on Christmas eve, when he was thirteen years old.

It was almost 2 a.m., and Johnny was lying on his bed with his eyes trained on his open bedroom door, hoping to catch a glimpse of his parents sneaking into his room to stuff presents into the stocking by the foot of his bed. After years of rebuttal and constant denial, he was eager to _finally_ prove to his friends that Santa wasn’t real, and it was their parents who had been playing the role of the bearded gift-giver all along. However, he had been waiting for _hours_ , and Johnny’s parents hadn’t shown up yet. His tired eyes couldn’t focus on the door anymore, and he nearly drifted off to sleep, but something kept him wide awake.

As he was about to close his eyes, the room was suddenly filled with a unique warmth he could never forget. Johnny stared into the brightness, his curiosity overpowering the fear.

A shining figure in the shape of a man stood a few feet off the ground, his bowed head almost touching the ceiling, extended wings protruding from his back. His arms were folded together in silent prayer, and his eyes were closed.

Johnny blinked, and he was gone.

“You _still_ have that angel?”

“I don’t have the heart to throw it away,” Johnny confessed to his friends. “It brings back memories.”

Taeyong, his best friend, grinned at him. “Leave it to Johnny to find sentiment in an old angel decoration.”

Johnny laughed along with the other friends who had come to spend Christmas eve with him. He really was quite the romantic and held on to a lot of things from his childhood, but this handmade angel in particular was by far the one he cherished the most, although he had no idea why.

Ten walked down the road with his head held high, his white robes littered with scorch marks and in tatters, twin scars marking his otherwise-unblemished back. The freezing North wind blew, but he wasn’t affected. His arms were bare, but he didn’t feel the cold.

He turned into a street and knocked on the door of the first house on the right, which he knew was house number ten. It took a little while for the door to be answered, which Ten chalked it up to the fact that it was incredibly late at night. Most humans would be asleep by this time, he thought, but not this one. Ten knew that this one was different.

The wooden door swung open to reveal a man.

The man towered over Ten, wearing a beige hoodie that was loose on his huge frame. He was _much_ taller than Ten had remembered, no longer the little boy that Ten had first seen. His face was so much more attractive up close.

“Who are you?” Johnny stifled a yawn, his sleepy eyes not focusing on the man at his doorstep.

“It’s me, John,” Ten hesitated for a second before continuing. “The angel.”

His words seemed to snap Johnny out of a trance, and he looked at Ten with a renewed gaze, his wide eyes studying Ten’s features.

“Ten?” He breathed. Ten loved the way his name sounded on Johnny’s lips. He had heard Johnny say his name many times before, but the fact that Johnny was saying it to _him_ made it feel special. Not knowing what else to do, Ten inclined his head.

Johnny exhaled shakily, reaching out an unsteady hand to touch Ten’s face. He almost stepped backwards, ready to leave at a moment’s notice before remembering that he was human now. For once, he could stay.

So, he let Johnny cup his cheek with his warm, _human_ hand, their breaths mixing and forming miniature clouds in the chilly air.

“You’re real,” Johnny said, sounding more like a question than a statement.

Ten nodded again. “Yes.”

“Where are your wings?”

Ten swallowed. “Gone.”

Johnny finally took his eyes off Ten’s face to look at his bedraggled robes, his eyes travelling down to Ten’s bare feet and back to his face. His expression was unreadable. “Why?”

“You,” Ten had simply answered.

After years of watching and listening, he had finally realized that the answer was always Johnny. It had been Johnny all along.

Johnny wasn’t expecting much when a stranger knocked on his door in the middle of the night. He had seen many people come running on Christmas eve, some asking for spare change, others begging for a warm meal. He had never turned them away before, their helplessness breaking his heart.

He opened the door to a man who looked about his age but was much shorter than he was. There was something about the man that he thought he had seen before. He couldn't tell whether it was the curve of his lips, or the sharp angle of his jawline. Whatever it was, Johnny instantly recognized it.

“Who are you?”

“It’s me, John,” The man enunciated each word carefully, sounding each syllable with precision. His name sounded strange and foreign, yet so familiar in the man’s mouth “The angel.”

The fog in his mind cleared suddenly, as if the man had uttered a spell of some sort, and he blinked a few times, not quite believing his eyes as his brain made the connection. “Ten?”

Ten ducked his head, and Johnny instinctively reached out to him, pulled by an invisible thread. His hand hovered in midair for a moment before cupping around Ten’s face.

It fit his hand like a puzzle piece, like they were somehow meant to be. For the first time in his life, Johnny understood what people meant when they said that they had found their soulmate.

“You’re real.”

“Yes.”

A million thoughts were flashing through his head at the speed of light, and all of them were about Ten.

Ten, whose skin was soft and smooth and _real_ under Johnny’s own hand. Ten, whose lips turned up in the corners, his eyes dark but full of all the colours of the rainbow. Ten, whose hair was the exact same length as it was before, hanging in his face and almost covering his eyes, looking dishevelled but perfect at the exact same time. Ten, who was standing right in front of him. Ten, Ten, Ten.

A year passed since then, and it was Christmas again. This year, Johnny put up his tree as usual, but he didn’t hang the angel on the very top like he normally did. The decoration was hidden away in a box under his bed, safe and sound.

Johnny didn’t need the angel on the tree anymore. He already had one by his side.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/maelstrcms) / [curious cat](https://curiouscat.qa/maelstrcms)


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